How do you stop focusing on weight loss?

[PrincessFiona]

Things are going well, but I can’t seem to stop focusing on how much I have to lose. It leaves me calculating potential weight losses, worried about not losing, and focused on weight loss too much of the time. This is neither sustainable nor healthy. I stopped weighing myself. I think that will help. I’ve upped my EdX courses for distraction. How do I get through this so I can stay in it for the long haul. I’ve made good life changes. I want to just focus on something else. Is this just the newness?

Kris


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[MrsK]

I think it is newness. I literally weigh myself 4 times daily. I'm hoping that once I learn healthier habits, it will come more easily and I'll stop obsessing

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[OrionGrad]

Weighing myself daily helps keep me on track. If I’m up a pound one day, I’ll cut back on what I’m eating or exercise a little more. I guess it’s a little obsessive, but it works for me.

[Ladybug]

What are you doing for exercise?

[spotty_dog]

What's helped me is finding something else than weight to track. Something that actually reflects on health, unlike just the scale number which is...just a number. For me the thing I track is my resting heart rate, and also my average heart rate while working out. When I did strength training, it was the amount of weight I could lift. You could also track servings of vegetables, or grams of fiber, or other nutrition changes that you want to make slowly and sustainably over time? Measurable progress is AMAZING and motivating! But weight loss progress can be so erratic, nonlinear, and hard to control that it gets demotivating, in my experience.

(Full disclosure, my adult weight has only ever varied over a 20 pound range, so I'm not looking back at a former adult me and seeing quite such a large scale change to the current me. That said...I was as tall as I am now by the time I was 14 or 15, but I don't think it's at all reasonable to try to get that barely pubescent body back. My hormones and my life changed drastically from then until I was 25, and there was never any going back. So, I think it's okay not to want to get my fittest 20-something body back now that I'm (nearly) 40 either. My hormones have changed, my life has changed, I'm just trying to get to the best 40 year old me that's ready to do the stuff I enjoy now and into the next 50 years!)

[alotofyarn]

I don't know - I've never been that great at not obsessing over it.

[Ladybug]

What about learning a new activity? Something with skill and goals that keeps you active. Tennis, golf (walk and pull clubs) ultimate frisbee, hikes you want to collect around the state and hang/make picture books, yoga (should add for flexibility/injury prevention). Something social is always good to keep me coming back too. Favorite teachers hook me too.

Make a new family cookbook with healthy recipes everyone actually likes. Lol. Get a healthy cookbook you like and try every recipe. Make a recipe challenge and everyone has to come up with one healthy recipe they can cook for the family when they’re around.

The idea being switch from a losing mindset to a gaining mindset.

[alotofyarn]

I was thinking about this again as I weighed myself this morning, and I've gained a couple of pounds. Except I don't feel like I have - I really feel healthier and more toned than I have in a long time. I got a Stitch Fix box yesterday, and most of the clothes are too big. So even though the scale doesn't say what I'd like it to say, I feel like I've made progress.

[Bluejay]

What's helped me is finding something else than weight to track. Something that actually reflects on health, unlike just the scale number which is...just a number. For me the thing I track is my resting heart rate, and also my average heart rate while working out. When I did strength training, it was the amount of weight I could lift. You could also track servings of vegetables, or grams of fiber, or other nutrition changes that you want to make slowly and sustainably over time? Measurable progress is AMAZING and motivating! But weight loss progress can be so erratic, nonlinear, and hard to control that it gets demotivating, in my experience.

Thanks for this post, because I too have noticed that weight loss is erratic, nonlinear and hard to control. And yes, that becomes demotivating. Me and lots of my friends have had that nasty surprise when expecting to lose weight, but instead the scale has a gain. I always say that weight loss is more of an art than a science. That there is no formula where you can input calories eaten and energy used in exercise, and output weight loss. But I have not known what to measure instead. So you have given me good ideas to ponder there.

[Bluejay]

I had another thought. You could weigh every day, and then take the average of the 7 days at the end of the week, and that is your weight loss number. That should smooth out all the bumps.

[PrincessFiona]

I had another thought. You could weigh every day, and then take the average of the 7 days at the end of the week, and that is your weight loss number. That should smooth out all the bumps.

I use an app, Happy Scale, that actually does that.

Kris


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